Voter-approved election reforms produced their desired effect in Assembly District 10, where voters in Marin and Sonoma counties will choose between two strong candidates in a highly competitive race.

Assemblyman Mike Allen and San Rafael Councilman Marc Levine, both Democrats, emerged as the top two finishers in the June primary. In the past, the election would have been settled in the primary in this heavily Democratic terrain. But the top-two runoff system - combined with an independent redistricting process - opened the door for a newcomer like Levine to take on the choice of the Sacramento and labor establishments.

Levine, 38, is exactly the type of problem-solving, partisanship-busting public servant that reformers had in mind when they pushed the two measures (Prop. 11, 2008; Prop. 14, 2010) to instill a little competitiveness in legislative races.

Levine would bring to Sacramento the perspective of a local official who has seen the impact of top-down decisions from the state, as well as the sensibility of a father of two young children who is concerned about the long-term effects of the state's inability to enact education and pension reforms. He rightly noted that the pension reforms recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown still leave the state with an unfunded liability in the hundreds of billions.

Allen, a longtime labor leader, helped craft that tepid deal. On the plus side, he has been a strong voice on the important and often neglected issue of mental health.

But Allen, who recently moved from Santa Rosa to San Rafael for this race, comes with baggage worthy of voters' attention. He was fined $3,000 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for voting as a Santa Rosa planning commissioner in 2009 to approve a general-plan map that included a project in which he had previously had a $95,000 contract to provide legal help. His excuse? The staff did not inform him of its inclusion.

Allen also was a late-arriving opponent of the controversial Rohnert Park casino, supporting it for years as a labor leader and voting against it in the Legislature only after it was a done deal and only in the face of intense community opposition to it.